South Carolina carried out the execution of Mikal Mahdi by firing squad on Friday, following unsuccessful appeals to both state and federal courts.
Mahdi, 42, was convicted of two murders committed in 2004: the killing of off-duty police officer James Myers in Calhoun County, South Carolina, and the murder of convenience store clerk Christopher Boggs in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He received a death sentence for Myers’s murder and a life sentence for Boggs’s.
Having been afforded a choice of execution methods—lethal injection, electric chair, or firing squad—Mahdi selected the latter. According to reports from the Associated Press, he did not deliver a final statement and appeared to avoid looking at the nine witnesses present before being hooded and subsequently shot by three volunteer prison employees. Officials declared him dead less than four minutes after the shots were fired.
For his last meal, Mahdi requested a substantial spread including ribeye steak cooked medium, mushroom risotto, broccoli, collard greens, cheesecake, and sweet tea.
“This case is about whether an appropriate punishment was meted out,” stated Mahdi’s attorney in a final appeal.
The circumstances surrounding the murders were as follows:
- On July 18, 2004, Myers, 56, was discovered burned in his shed after being shot multiple times (at least eight) following an attempt by Mahdi to purchase gas with a stolen credit card. Mahdi had abandoned a carjacked vehicle at a nearby gas station and was apprehended later in Florida while driving Myers’s unmarked police truck.
- Three days prior, Boggs, a convenience clerk, was fatally shot twice in the head after attempting to verify Mahdi’s identification.
Mahdi’s legal team argued that his initial representation was inadequate, pointing out that key witnesses—relatives, teachers, and others familiar with him—were not called to testify. They also highlighted the detrimental impact of several months spent in solitary confinement during Mahdi’s adolescence.
Prosecutors countered that Mahdi’s inherent nature was marked by violence, citing instances where he assaulted prison staff—stabbing one guard and striking another with a concrete block—and possessing tools potentially usable for escape, including sharpened metal implements. Prison records confirmed these incidents.
Mahdi’s execution marks the second time in recent weeks that South Carolina has utilized a firing squad to carry out a death sentence, making it the fifth execution in the state within the last eight months. Following this execution, South Carolina now holds 26 inmates on death row; only one individual has been sentenced to death in the past decade.
